no progress before the election campaign began. no progress during the campaign. then more recently, house speaker john boehner and president obama each made important concessions. the president on entitlement spending. speaker boehner on upper income tax rates. speaker boehner, though, could not get conservative republicans to go along and seemed at a loss for what to do next. >> we can't cut our way to prosperity. we need real economic growth. many of us believe on both sides of the aisle on the fundamental reform of our tax code will help us get our economy moving faster and put more americans back to work. and more americans on the tax rolls. how we get there, god only knows. >> president obama, meantime, seemed to lose patience. no sign he's eager to go off the cliff, but he's also not ready, either, to concede more to get, in his words, what he'll get for free when the bush tax cuts expire tuesday morning. democratic lawmakers, though, are more willing to let that and everything else happen and both sides are still pointing fingers. take a look at senate min